by Nancy Adams
I sat for a moment with a guilty look on my face, wondering if my chasteness had upset him. But he merely straightened himself out, and the joyful grin returned to his lips. Although I hadn't told him that I was a virgin, I’d warned him that I liked to take things slow, and he’d respected that. At times—like just now—we’d lose ourselves, and I’d be forced to pull away. On each occasion, he never showed anger, always remained soft, always willing to accept the denial, giving me the impression—without saying the words—that he would leave it to me to decide how far things should go.
“Ah!” Josh suddenly exclaimed. “I almost forgot. I have something in the trunk for you.”
He sprung out of the car and fetched whatever it was from the back as I eagerly awaited his return. When he jumped back in, he was carrying a white box with a silver bow tied around it and Dior written in gold lettering on the box’s center. My heart thudded with the pleasure of a special delight. It was an old feeling, one from my past, one that brought back a flood of pictorial images of when my father would lavish luxurious gifts on me as a young girl. I’d been given Dior back then, and that same residual feeling of excited jubilation came back to me now after so long. Sitting in Josh’s car, I felt every bit the little girl I was back then.
“Now that you’re walking again,” he said as I tentatively took the box from him, “I thought that you deserved something to show your legs off. I actually had it made specially for you. Your sister, Lucy, gave me one of your dresses so that I could give them your measurements. Open it.”
“Josh, you shouldn’t have,” I said, almost gasping. “I haven’t seen Dior for so very long. Even the box is bringing me out in goose bumps.”
I opened it up and that faint whiff of fragrance that always seems present inside luxury boxes drifted out, arousing my nostrils. I peered down at the tissue paper inside, always folded so perfectly, the certificate of guarantee resting upon it. I lifted the certificate out and stared at it, holding it in my hand, ivory-colored card with black print in Baskerville font.
Christian Dior
Carte d’authenticité
I held the card up to my nose and smelled it, before placing it to the side and tenderly opening up the tissue paper so as not to tear it, scared to injure the delicate contents of that most opulent box. Once I’d achieved this, I gasped as I saw the iconic Dior design of tight bodice and pleated skirt. It was in pure white, and as I lifted out the dress, it felt like a little piece of heaven in my hands, like lifting up a piece of sun-drenched, vanilla cloud.
“Since I first bumped into you on that street,” he began as I gazed in awe at the dress, “I’ve imagined you in the classic Dior look. Nothing that shows off too much, just enough. Tightly fitting to the waist, showing the curvature of the hips, but being delicate and subtle enough not to go too far in revealing too much of the legs, instead allowing the body to keep some of its natural virtue. I think it suits you so perfectly: modest, yet unbelievably beautiful, without the slightest pretense.”
I looked up at him from the dress, then craned forward and kissed him once again on the lips, only a slow peck this time to show my gratitude for both the dress and the compliment. My eyes returned to the divine form in my hands, and it was then during that second glance at it that a new pang hit me, one utterly indifferent to the former joyous one and based very much in the present rather than the past.
“How much did this cost?” I couldn't help asking, urged on by this new pang.
“It doesn’t matter,” he stated. “It’s a gift, you shouldn’t ask.”
“I should when I work around people that hardly even make in a year what this dress probably cost. So how much?”
“Does this mean you don’t want it?” he said, a look of disappointment melting his earlier joyful expression.
“I want it, but I can’t have it,” I had to admit with a guilty expression.
“But the look on your face a moment ago—the way you sniffed the card, for Pete’s sake,” he pleaded. “All of that told me that you want this dress as much as I want you to have it, if not more. Stop pulling yourself back all the time; have something, enjoy something, live without cause, and live without regret for five minutes. This dress is yours, I want you to have it, you deserve this dress. Don’t give up that spark of pure fire I just saw in your eyes when you held that thing in your hands.”
“How much?” I still wanted to know.
He groaned and shook his head.
“Ten thousand dollars.”
“Oh my!” I let out, placing the dress carefully back in the box, scared that I’d destroy it with the faintest hint of brutishness, and, therefore, cause thousands of dollars’ worth of damage.
“Dior usually go for about four to seven grand,” he informed me, “but I wanted to have an old haute couture design that’s currently off sale made for you in white. I had to have it made in Paris and sent over. That dress was one of the last designs by Christian Dior himself, before his death. I remembered my mother wearing one in black in an old photograph and thought that it would suit you in white.”
“That’s wonderful, Josh. Really,” I replied, smiling at him. “And I’m overjoyed at the gesture, I truly am. But ten thousand dollars on a dress when I buy mine for twenty dollars, and with people out there with not even that amount of money to spend on food in a year. I can’t.”
I gazed across into his eyes, and he seemed on the point of saying something but stopped himself.
“Okay,” he exclaimed softly. “I’ll do something else with it. Maybe donate it to a charity store.”
“Can’t you get your money back?”
“Probably not. Like I say, I had it especially tailored from an old design.”
I looked back down at the article of pure beauty and shuddered. So much of me wanted it, and an indescribable inner compulsion pressed me to accept the gift. The dress shimmered at me as though it were made of light, and I quickly placed the lid back on the box before I could change my mind.
“I’m sorry,” I stated. “But I can’t accept it.”
Josh gently sighed. But then something appeared to come to him, some idea, because his face softened into a grin.
“A thought just came to me,” he said slyly.
“What is it?”
“Don’t worry. You’ll find out,” he put back. “Give me another kiss, your dad’s waiting for you.”
He nodded toward the house, and when I turned to see, sure enough my father was looking out of the window at us.
“Okay,” I said, before leaning forward and kissing him on the lips. He delicately took hold of my cheek, cradling it in his hand, and I moved my own hands under his shirt and across his rippled torso, feeling the delicate knots of sinewed flesh with my fingers. When we parted, we remained smiling into each other’s eyes for several seconds, drifting off into the sea of one another.
Having drifted far enough, I said goodbye and got out of the car, leaving the precious Dior box on the car seat, a tinge of sadness going through me at having given it up. From the sidewalk, I watched Josh leave, waving him off, and then walked toward my front door. My father was no longer standing at the window, having retreated into the house.
JOSH
I drove away from Sarah’s with the sun blazing brightly in my heart. Her knock-back of the dress had initially bothered me, but I’d quickly understood that it was always going to be that way. It was precisely for things like this that I was so drawn to her. I’d seen in her green eyes just how much she’d liked it, how much she’d wanted it. But, like the humble person she is, she couldn't accept it, because to her it was unfair. I felt my heart swoon at her precious modesty and benevolence in giving up something that she had sincerely wanted in favor of staying true to her altruistic principles. I had decided there and then that I would do something else with the dress, something that she would truly appreciate. A plan formed in my head and made me happy that it was so honorable when compared with the treachery of former schemes that had circulated my
mind. But it would have to wait until Saturday when it could be pulled off. So I put it out the way for the moment while I drove to Charlie’s.
Twisting the BMW through the suburban streets toward the inner city, I decided to give the kid a call before I arrived. I didn’t want to get there during his bath time again. The last was almost unbearable.
“Hey, Josh,” Charlie answered.
“I’m about twenty minutes from you, buddy. I was wanting to know if it was bath time?”
“No” was his swift answer.
“Good. Because the last time was murder, kid, I’m not gonna lie. Listening to your mom tell you to lift your arms and then hearing you scream at her for scrubbing too hard was not something anyone would want to hear come from the lips of a grown man.”
“It’s not like I can help it. I need her to help.”
“It’s still creepy, Charlie. Real fucking creepy. And I get the impression that your injuries are merely a smokescreen. That this may have been a regular occurrence all your adolescent life. Because I recall you being a little dirtbag at college, and since your ma’s been around, you’ve been squeaky clean.”
“Whatever!” he blurted out, waving away my insinuations. “Just get round here quick. I’ve got a new elite weapon on Fate.”
Fate was a video game we played together.
“Ooh! What is it?” I eagerly wanted to know. “Is it the Death Seller pulse rifle?”
“No! Much better. I won it on a Vs death match.”
“Not the Dragon’s Breath rocket launcher?”
“The very same!”
“No way! Oh! I gotta see this. Sign my profile in. I’ll put my foot down and be there in ten. Tell Mrs. H. to put the kettle on and plate up some of her delicious brownies!”
I put the phone down, along with my foot, and skirted through the sleepy midafternoon traffic. Within eight minutes I was pulling into the apartment car lot. And only a few minutes after that I was seating myself in a comfy leather La-Z-Boy, Charlie in his gaming chair next to me, my feet up and hands holding a controller, ready to fight aliens in faraway galaxies. In the background, Mrs. H. was cutting up the brownies in the kitchen, which was situated across a breakfast counter in the corner of the lounge, essentially a part of the same room.
“You’re looking very dapper, Josh,” Mrs. Hodge remarked as she went about her motherly business.
“Thank you, Mrs. H.,” I called back to the kitchen. “I put the effort in for you, of course.”
“Oh you!” She giggled.
“Could you not flatter my mother,” Charlie grumbled. “It makes me nauseous.”
Turning back to Charlie, I whispered, “She loves it. It’s nice for her to have a little male adulation. Do you think she and your dad still do it?” I added in an undertone.
“Ah! Come on!”
“I mean, a fine woman like your ma being away from him while you get better. It doesn’t seem to be the most physical of setups if they can stay apart that long.”
“Stop, please. The thought of them doing… that makes me wanna throw up. I prefer to live under the illusion that they had sex once for the purposes of procreation. They had me, and then that was enough.”
“You keep believing that, Charlie. You keep living under your illusion. But I bet old Mrs. H. is a frisky piece of ass in the bedroom!”
“Ah!” Charlie cried out.
“What’s the matter, Charles?” his mother asked as she came out of the kitchen with the brownies.
“Nothing you’d want to know, Ma,” Charlie replied, his face red. “Josh was just being weird.”
“About what?” she asked innocently.
“I was just telling Charlie,” I began in a charming tone, “that I couldn’t believe that you were as old as fifty.”
“I’m not fifty,” she replied.
“See, Charlie,” I let out with a grin, “I told you she was only forty at most.”
“No no,” she said, blushing, “I’m not forty, I’m sixty-one.”
I playfully narrowed my eyes at her.
“First he jokes about you being fifty, and now you wanna pull my leg even further by saying you’re over sixty,” I said mirthfully, glancing between the two of them. “Are you two both trying to pull my leg?”
“No, I’m honestly that old,” Mrs. H. insisted sincerely.
Charlie, meanwhile, was gently grinning, amused at his mother’s simple innocence, but, at the same instance, becoming embarrassed by my jovial antics.
“Okay, that’s enough,” he exclaimed. “Ma, just leave the brownies and let us play Fate.”
“You could say please, Charles,” she retorted.
“Okay—please go back to whatever it was that you were formally doing.”
She pierced her eyes at her son as I grinned to myself, before leaving us to it. Not long after, we were fully sucked into the game, exploring worlds, completing missions, shooting shit, and just allowing time to slip away into nothing. As we played, our gazes disappearing into the void of the TV, we began to chat away idly. Talk progressed to films and what we’d watch tonight after we’d gotten bored of gaming, usually when the images were scorched into our pupils and we couldn’t hold off the motion sickness anymore, feeling as sick as a sailor at the incessant revolving, pulsating imagery of the game.
“It’s my turn tonight,” Charlie was saying, regarding the choice of film.
“Not another fucking superhero movie!” I exclaimed.
“It’s better than your film the other night, Requiem for a Dream. What was that about? Two hours of watching an old lady slowly go mad on drugs, a junkie losing his arm to infection, and a girl turning into a prostitute. You know my mother had nightmares afterward?”
“Sorry, Mrs. H.,” I called into the kitchen, where Mrs. Hodge was reading a book. She often liked to sit among us, for company I guess.
“That’s okay, Josh,” she replied in her cheery tone. “The film was just a little, you know, disturbing. I never knew people were capable of imagining such things.”
“It would disturb you further to know that that sort of thing actually happens,” I put to her.
“Gosh!”
“Josh!” Charlie burst out. “Don’t tell my ma that! She’s from a small town in Texas. The worst thing that ever happened there was when farmer Ridley’s cows got loose and two of them got hit by trucks on the freeway.”
“Sorry again, Mrs. H.,” I called out.
“It’s okay,” she replied.
“It was a beautiful film though,” I remarked.
“Yes, the music was lovely,” Mrs. H. commented back, making me smile.
The old gal was so darn sweet I feared I’d contract diabetes from spending so much time around her.
After that we played another half hour, and then we all settled down to watch The Avengers. Typical! Once the film ended in its usual good-triumphs-evil with a few complications and some laughs along the way, I wished the mother and son a good night and left the apartment block. I exited the elevator at the parking level with a spring in my step, texting Sarah on my phone and paying no attention to my surroundings.
“Well, I had to see it to believe it,” a familiar voice resounded as I stepped into the hallway, making me look up from the phone and take notice.
I was surprised to find both Terry and Kane standing there.
“You been visiting old Charlie Hodge,” Kane went on, “but your real friends you simply ignore.”
“Hey, guys,” I said as cheerily as I could in my surprised state. “I was gonna call, but I lost my phone.”
“Oh, and there was us thinking you were simply blowing us off,” Kane retorted.
“It’s not just the phone. My old man’s on my case about hanging with previous associates, and because Charlie isn’t one, he lets me see him. I really gotta keep a low profile this time, or he’s gonna end all my funding. You can understand that?”
“You never worried about it before,” Terry put to me. “All the other t
imes you just shrugged it off and did what you wanted.”
“Yeah, but this time he really means it.”
“Why couldn’t you call or message us to explain that, then?” Kane asked.
“Because he’s monitoring my calls and all my social media. I would have, believe me, but I gotta watch it. For real.”
They both stood glaring at me with narrowed eyes, weighing it all up in their obtuse brains. Having tossed my words around for several seconds, their expressions dissolved into broad grins.
“Okay, fuck it!” Kane exclaimed. “You’re here now and that’s all that counts. Let’s go to a fucking bar and get wasted. Me and Terry found this new illegal dance club.”
“The place is underground in some old Cold War bunker,” Terry added. “It goes on until ten the next morning. It’s fucking daytime when you leave.”
“Guys,” I put to them, “the old man wants me back by eleven and it’s ten now.”
“Then you got an hour to hang with your boys,” Kane put, and I instantly felt cornered.
“Okay.” I shrugged. “Just an hour.”
JOSH
A terrible sound rang in my ears, a harsh and invading noise, like space itself was being ripped apart over and over by some impudent star-child having fun at the back of his cosmic classroom, the remaining void sucking everything into it, including time itself. I felt myself at the mercy of that sound, trespassing into my head and tearing into my dreams, pulling me toward its gaping black hole. Eventually, the invasive, harsh sound became so strong that it woke me up. When it had, consciousness gradually creeping over me, I slowly gathered that I was lying facedown on a hard floor, and that the sound ripping through my head was actually heavy snoring, rather than any cosmic catastrophe.
I rolled myself onto my side, and the contents of my stomach swished about as I did, making it jump and surge toward my gullet, forcing me to stop my movements until I’d pushed it back. That out the way, I got onto my back and looked around. I was surrounded on all sides by an army of crumpled, soiled clothing that had never quite marched its way to the laundry basket. A musky odor attacked my nostrils, making my stomach skip through another nauseous hoop, and I realized I was in either Terry or Kane’s room. I quickly gathered that the snoring emanated from the bed, where a single foot dangled from its edge, and I slowly sat up so that I could see who both foot and noise belonged to. I saw that it was Terry once I was upright, my head spinning the moment it was elevated more than a single foot from the floor.
